July 30, 1925
Santa Monica
In a small house by the sea, five days after Jack had seen Rose, his daughter, Lillian Dawson, came into the world. Doctors had rushed to Amelia's side around midnight the previous morning as she screamed out in pain. The pain ripped through her abdomen and Jack could do nothing but attempt to comfort her in any way possible. He sat by her side the entire time, wiping the sweat from her forehead. The labor had lasted eighteen hours and each hour Amelia grew more and more exhausted. Her pulse rate slowed dramatically and the two doctors who had delivered the baby had become increasingly worried about her state. She was too weak to be taken to the hospital, so she had to be strong enough to bear the baby all by herself. But that wasn't to be. By six AM Amelia was almost too weak to open her eyes and at around 6:30 AM, she was pronounced dead. Dead? As if she was just meat or something. The child, a girl, had slipped out of Amelia and was immediately taken to the hospital to be monitored for fear that she, too, would lose her life. The world felt like a cruel place to Jack. Once again, God had dealt him a rough hand by taking his wife, although giving him a daughter in the process. He felt anger and sadness. Why Amelia? She was so perfect, so strong, and was looking forward to having a child just as much as he was. He did nothing but cry in the days following his wife's death. Her family, the Martins, had already begun making funeral arrangements, while Jack still suffered, unable to take in the week’s events. His life had changed dramatically in the space of a week. Nightmares invaded his sleep—the bed Amelia had died in drenched in her blood, sweat, and tears, her lifeless body, her face as she took her last breath. his daughter wailing as she had taken her first breath in the world before being taken away from him to the hospital. He had not yet held her. He longed to. She was a perfect baby, though small and almost frail-looking, with a small mop of dirty blonde hair and perfect brown eyes.
Jack had met Amelia Martin in late 1923 after moving back to Santa Monica. She was just twenty-three at the time and was eight years younger than Jack. She was instantly attracted to him, the handsome stranger, the artist. She was a dancer, the envy of every woman and the object of every man’s affection. After just five months together, the pair had married. Jack loved Amelia, but not in the way a man should love his wife. After a few months of marriage, Amelia had become pregnant. Both of them were full of shock, but also ecstatic. Amelia had longed for a child with the man she loved. She would sit for hours singing to her stomach and stroking the bump. The pregnancy hadn't been an easy one, especially towards the end. Jack would work long days on the pier, selling his paintings just like he had done years before, but he felt at home there. Rose was always in the back of Jack's mind, but he knew one day she would fade—until the day of Amelia's death. For some reason, the image of Rose was more clear in his mind than anything else. In a way, he blamed himself for Amelia's death. She was everything he didn't deserve, not by a long shot, but after the funeral, a week after her death, Jack made the decision to leave Santa Monica…to leave behind the memory of Rose, and the place that was tainted with blood after Amelia's death. How could he survive there anymore? But where else did he have to go? He had a daughter to raise now, alone. He had to give her a good life. Amelia would have loved her daughter so much, and he owed it to her to bring up their child the way Amelia would have wanted, and the only way he could do that now was not in Santa Monica, not even in America.
So, on the morning of August 18, 1925, with just one suitcase full of his belongings and his daughter in his arms, he boarded the Olympic, bound for England. A new country, a fresh start, somewhere he had not been for years. England had been home to him for two months in early 1912 before his passage on the Titanic, and he had liked it there, although now, thirteen years later and after the Great War, he knew life there would be different. The passage would be Jack's first since he had fought in the war ten years before, and was a hard one. The Olympic was, of course, the Titanic's sister ship, and boarding the ship hadn't been easy. Adjusting to fatherhood wasn't easy, either. Everything was new to him, but he soon grew accustomed to the life and seeing his daughter grow was the most incredible thing in the world. Knowing he helped create something so amazing was beyond him, and from then on his life changed. He could no longer roam the world and run from state to state. He had to settle now, for Lilly's sake.